Aqua Bay Hotel

We booked with first choice online. We are used to holiday villages but I’ve been finding them too busy and noisy and too English :-( What I loved about here is it’s small, friendly and quiet. Please please please Aqua Bay, don’t listen to the English people asking for more entertainment, it’s so good to find a low key very special hotel that doesn’t cater for silly entertainment but is classy. How beautiful that different nationalities could sit outside after dinner, having conversations, playing cards while the children play together. That’s what holidays are about, I hope this hotel stays this way as I had THE most relaxing holiday with my family. Thank you for celebrating our twins birthday. Jordana our maid was so caring, she has a wonderful heart. We enjoyed the food, there’s not a huge choice but that was good, non of us struggled with eating, there was plenty to choose from. The only food we didn’t like was the pool food, but we went to the main restaurant and enjoyed chilled lunches. Thank you to all the staff, keep doing what you are doing from us in room 122 xx

Aqua Bay Hotel (Zante) booked On-Line via the First Choice Website Dates: 27th May - 10th June 2019 Family of four. Two adults + two kids (46yrs + 45yrs / 8yrs & 6rys) Cost: just a few pounds under £3700 for two weeks with Meet&Greet at Doncaster Airport included. Holiday was booked April April 2018. Coming with high expectations having holidayed at the Family Life Aegean Blue in Rhodes for the last two years, but this holiday is a good £1500 less that what we'd be paying for the same time of year at the Aegean Blue. This is a lovely small hotel, with only 68 rooms. All having a number of pools (7 great small pools mixed 1.25m & 1.35m deep) very very close to the room accommodation. It is more of a mixed nationality hotel. Where as it's sister hotel next door (the Planos Bay) seemed to be nearly all Brits. I like a mixed hotel and have a thing now about not wanting to be at a all brit geared up hotel, for the usual reasons of feeling embarrassed about how some brits conduct themselves when on holiday! Back to the Aqua Bay, Loads of plus points to start with. 1st off... no need to be up at silly o'clock to put towels out, it's not that sort of hotel, there's plenty of sunbeds near where your room is, to use the pool closest to you. Food: Good quality but a limited choice being a small hotel, we always found something to eat that was different and never had a bad meal. During the week, there's theme nights you book in for, through the reception at Aqua bay. These were held at the restaurant in the water park area. BBQ, Mediterranean, Mexican, Asian and Greek night etc. Great to sit out but depending on weather in the evening meant sometimes food didn't stay hot for long (not a fault of the hotel though). Aqua Bay guests get to use the a la carte Elia Restaurant one a week during your stay. We went obviously twice in two weeks. One of those times our son's 8th Birthday. These were the best nights for food for us. Cooked to order, came hot, good mix of food on the menu and highly recommend you going. They looked after us very well on both occasions. Staff: No issues with anyone, all happy to help. Shout out to Nicos on the Walnut Bar, he was very good, came round asking if anyone wanted drinks and brought drinks to you. I hope he gets enough tips for that fast red car he wants :) The waitress Arrgiro in the main restaurant was also very smiley and helpful, knowing what drinks we'd be wanting at lunch etc. The Tui Rep, RUBY. I can't say enough about her, very helpful with great insight on where to visit. Gave us a map which she'd written all over it with places to visit when we had a hire car for two days. Always smiley and happy to see and speak to us. A great asset to Tui and the Hotel!!!! Room: we had room 223. which was on the 'quite' side of the hotel, over looking only two pools. It was on the 1st floor up. Clean and modern and had a partition to separate our bed from the kids. Kept as clean as possible by our maid, as it could be with our kids and stuff!! Water Park: really good, ideal only a few steps away from the Aqua Bay, good choice of slides. Be warned, some slides have height restriction most are 1.2m, 1.3m and 1.4m. Which upset our 6yr old who swims well. He is only 1.25m and was stopped from going on some slides even though they all end in the same plunge pool which you need to swim out of..... which he could and did swim out easily. The open WHITE Slide (which I thought was the best had no restrictions on) still ends up in the same pool at the bottom had no height restrictions and small kids with arm bands on were even going down! but the tube YELLOW slide was a 1.3m height restriction, the same as the drop slide which you use a ring on. The 'Bowl slide is 1.4m. Snack Bars: for the all inclusive 11:30am-1pm then closes and re opens 3pm-5:30pm when it's closed to All Inclusive at 1pm-3pm in the waterpark, you pay for the food, as guest of the water park use it too. No idea why it can't still be offered to ALL Inclusive guests. BTW.. the waterpark snack bar food did seem better than the food offered at the Walnut Snack Bar.. seemed hotter and fresher, more choice. We only used it the last two days of our holiday, should have used it more as it wasn't far to walk down from Aqua bay to get to it. Tui ran Kids Club: which you use down at the Planos bay, a bit hit and miss, they have two days off a week. activities change weekly. Our boys were sad they missed a sports afternoon as the week has changed, but found they were doing the same activity they did only 5 days before. Morning and afternoon activities would be better rotated, that way if your kids do the morning/afternoon they're not overlapping the same things. The girls were great though and looked after our boys when they went. You can use the kids club once a day, either Morning or Afternoon. and now for the reason I say VERY VERY GOOD... BUT.... evening entertainment is dire. I know this isn't a Family Life or Holiday Village type of place but I have to say evening entertainment which is in the grounds of the water park, and is shared with the Aqua Bay Suites and Planos Bay hotel is almost nonexistent. Kids mini disco is at 8:30pm for 30mins. It's too late for little kids needs to be at least 7:30, even 7pm! our boys were getting tired by then and wanted to go to bed just after 9pm. After 9pm every thing seemed to fall flat. It was Bingo twice a week! Maybe an act. The only ones I stayed for were the Greek dancing.. it was ok.. nothing to right home about. Sunday has a female singer (Hayley I think her name was) she was great, could sing had rapport with the audience, well those that were still there and not left to take kids to bed. I think we managed half an hour before the kids needed to go to sleep. This is where the hotel needs to up it's game. If it's a low budget, charge a bit extra per head on the holiday price and bring some better acts in that would keep an audience entertained. Also the room it's held in does feel like your sitting in a cattle market, concrete floors, low ceiling, a few chairs and tables. Not the nicest of venues to spend an evening relaxing. The Aqua bay Hotel also needs to offer some evening entertainment around the outside pool bar or in the lounge areas in an evening. The bar is open with people sitting around with only background music. It lacks atmosphere. A live musician or soloist would for me enhance the Aqua Bay experience. As many without kids or even with kids didn't want to endure the evening entertainment down at the waterpark. Other than above comments, wine and beer on self serve pumps would make it easier than waiting to be served at he bar or wait while having dinner for it to be brought over to you. As a non drinker myself, the farmfood mum and the happy shopper kids soft drinks is unnecessary in this day and age. There is no reason why branded soft drinks from either Pepsi, Cocacola & Fanta etc can't be offer. Cheap soft drinks taste cheap. It's not expensive to improve on this type of drink. A hotel listed as 5* (Tui/FirstChoice Greek rated) can easily up its game and stand out from 'cheaper' hotels. Oh and to any Brits/Western Europeans not used to the Greek toilet system.. it is NO toilet paper etc down the toilet!! I know, it does seem backwards these days lol To sum up: Great hotel, great holiday, would recommend it. Glad we were at the Aqua Bay and not the Planos Bay ;) I've given it a 4 out of 5 TA rating mainly due to entertainment and the little things that could easily be improved on for the Aqua Bay. Would I go back, yes. But not likely as we've seen the island now. Hire a car, explore like we did. One day the south, the other day the north. It's easy to drive round.. (make sure you have Google Maps though on your phone). Also I recommend the 8hr boat trip (by MyTours, there's a booking agent just down the road from the Planos Bay) that takes you round all the island with three swim stops. It was great to see the Rusty Ship and take photos next to it. All in all, now I'm home and look at my photos and reflect I had a great holiday and enjoyed being at the Aqua Bay.

From start to finish we had a lovely time at the Aqua Bay. We visited with our 6yr old. We were allocated a room on the ground floor, it was a family room with sliding partition to separate the bedrooms. The patio doors opened onto a decked area with 2 pools, we had 2 sunlougers right outside the door and 2 chairs. There were plenty of sun loungers around for everyone in the hotel. In the bathroom there were complimentary shower gel, body lotion, shampoo and conditioner, the bath robes and slippers are a lovely touch too even if they were a little on the big side. There was a deposit box (free) hairdryer, fridge and kettle in the room and the tea coffee etc were replenished daily. The room was cleaned daily and they left a 2ltr bottle of water everyday. If you require more you can ask at reception or at the bar. The pools were cleaned every morning. They vary in depth from 1.25m to 1.35m and are clearly marked. The water park is right next door and is great for kids of all ages and adults too. You can get food on the all inclusive between 11 & 1 and again between 3 & 5. They serve baguettes, salads, chips, burgers, hotdogs, cheese pies, spinach pies and pizza slices. Drinks are included all day. Icecreams are not included but you can get them at meal times in the hotel restaurant. There was always a good choice of food in the main restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner and we never tired of what was on offer. The theme nights in the water park were good too. We went to the Mediterranean, Italian, Greek and Mexican nights (If you have a child who is a fussy eater, they could struggle to find something they like at the theme nights so best to ask at reception what food will be available before you book) The night time entertainment takes place in the waterpark and was ok. Our Daughter loved the mini disco and we enjoyed the Greek dancers and the Greek singer. The other nights of bingo, kareoke & dance parade we weren't that fussed about. We just went outside and played pool and air hockey for a while. You could always go for a lovely walk across the beach at night or head into Tsilivi as there are many tavernas with things going on. The Adventure mini golf is about 20 min walk and is great fun day or night, and Luna Park about 10min walk is a brilliant place for kids in the evening with bouncing castles and trampolines. There is free Wi-Fi at the hotel and waterpark and there was only a few hours one day where the signal was low. The staff were all lovely and went out of their way to help if needed. We will definitely return to Aqua Bay.